Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/217

“Yes,” he cried, in a voice of thunder, “we will fight here and He shall look on at it.”

Turnbull glanced at the crucifix with a sort of scowling good-humour and then said: “He may look and see His cross defeated.”

“The cross cannot be defeated,” said MacIan, “for it is Defeat.”

A second afterward the two bright, bloodthirsty weapons made the sign of the cross in horrible parody upon each other.

They had not touched each other twice, however, when upon the hill, above the crucifix, there appeared another horrible parody of its shape; the figure of a man who appeared for an instant waving his outspread arms. He had vanished in an instant; but MacIan, whose fighting face was set that way, had seen the shape momentarily but quite photographically. And while it was like a comic repetition of the cross, it was also, in that place and hour, something more incredible. It had been only instantaneously on the retina of his eye; but unless his eye and mind were going mad together, the figure was that of an ordinary London policeman.

He tried to concentrate his senses on the swordplay; but one half of his brain was wrestling with